Posted By Dan Greenfield on Nov 17, 2024 | 1 comment

A BIRTHDAY SALUTE to one of comics’ best scribes…

By PETER STONE

Ed Brubaker is one of best-known writers in the comic industry. He started off small with stories in Dark Horse Presents before quickly moving on to Marvel and DC Comics where he wrote Batman, Catwoman, The Authority, Daredevil, Captain America and many others.

His claim to fame, however, was co-creating the Winter Soldier persona of Bucky Barnes. Heeven  had a cameo in Captain America: The Winter Soldier as one of his handlers.

Dream come true, right?

Steve Epting

The unique and wonderful thing about comics is usually the brilliant and personal art, telling fantastic stories and revealing amazing worlds. Many times, the artist would be the one who plotted the story about the Fantastic Four fighting Dr. Doom, leaving the writer to simply write the dialogue. DC Comics tended to ask writers to compose “full scripts.” They included panel breakdowns and dialogue. Better men than me can argue which style is better or worse, but I will say that artists will always be more famous than writers.

However, once is a while a writer comes along that transcends the concept of buying a comic because it has a cool cover or your favorite character. There’s only a handful of these writers who have ever existed in comics. Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis and, without a doubt, Ed Brubaker. Others might argue that other writers should be included in that list. Writers like Frank Miller or Harvey Kurtzman, but both of them are/were also artists as well.

The wonderful Thing about Ed Brubaker — born 58 years ago, on Nov. 17, 1966 — is that I would buy his work no matter who drew it because I know there will be a solid plot, good dialogue and a dose of noir. His epic run on Captain America straddled the line between standard superhero comics and something far darker. This is not the simple shock value of making Captain America a member of Hydra. No, it was carefully nuanced and there was the overwhelming sense of dread, leading all the way up to Cap being arrested — and killed by a sniper. It was a shocking moment, but it was structured and well plotted. (And Ed Brubaker never killed Rick Jones for defying Hydra.)

Michael Lark

His Catwoman run is fantastic, bringing new life to a cat burglar. A joy to read every issue. His Batman: Gotham Noir, and his runs on Gotham Central (with Greg Rucka) and Daredevil are all excellent, but as with every good superhero writer after an extended time period, they look for something different. Brubaker found it in his series of stories through Image Comics: Criminal, Incognito, The Fade Out, Fatale and Kill or Be Killed are all wonderfully dark stories. Old Hollywood, three-time losers, femmes fatale, and down-and-out writers.

He continues to create his detective stories, typically with his artistic collaborator Sean Phillips. Their 5-part Reckless series features an ex-surfer private eye and his purple-haired sidekick who work out of an abandoned movie theater, solving crimes and finding people. But with Brubaker, it’s not your Daddy’s P.I. It’s hard-core noir and a hell of a read.

Sean Phillips

He’s written beyond comics as well, for Westworld for example, and he’s done a series for Amazon called To Old To Die Young. (Amazon has greenlit at least one of his other projects.)

Brubaker is one of those guys who just seems to be so good, people love everything he does. He’s achieved the goal, which so many writers have, to write great superhero comics and then to move on to other media. I’ve loved Ed Brubaker for decades and probably always will. A master of plot and dialogue, he is a writer’s writer.

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MORE

— DARWYN COOKE: The Perfect Comics Creator. Click here.

— HARVEY KURTZMAN and NEAL ADAMS: Iron-Willed Creators of Vision. Click here.

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Peter Stone is a writer and son-in-law of the late Neal Adams. Be sure to check out the family’s twice-weekly online Facebook auctions, as well as the NealAdamsStore.com.